The classical record business gained a new lease on life in the 1980s when period instrument performances of baroque and classical music began to assume a place on the stage. This return to the past found its complement in the musical ascension of the American minimalists, in particular the music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams, and smaller specialty labels that focused on experimental composers like John Cage. During this period of change-of classical music's transition of looking both forward and back-Rob Haskins served as a reviewer for The American Record Guide, tracing these evolutions while also attending to works emerging from within the mainstream of classical music performance and composition. Classical Listening: Two Decades of Reviews of Reviews from The American Record Guide collects the several hundred reviews produced since Rob Haskins's start in the mid-1990s. A performer and musicologist, Haskins writes delightful, cogent reviews that unapologetically reflect his personal experience, musical interests, and professional background, emphasizing the value of subjectivity in music criticism. Witty, provocative, and eloquent, Haskins's book reads like a diary of personal experience even as it addresses important topics as diverse as historical performance practice and the aesthetics of contemporary music. It is also a perfect guide to buying or listening for the classical music devotee seeking an informed opinion on the breadth of remarkable recordings available. Record collectors, students and scholars of early and contemporary music, and performers, professionals, and general music lovers will find this collection an invaluable resource as they trace the reception of recordings in the last twenty years of classical music performance.

John Cage (1912--1992) is probably best known for works that challenge the fundamental definition of music---for example, his groundbreaking 4'33." In the last six years of his life, however, Cage wrote 48 compositions now known as the Number Pieces---works, usually scored for conventional Western instruments, that often contained precisely defined pitches. Each performer in one of these pieces performs his or her music in a strict order, but the actual start- and stop-times for each musical event vary because of Cage's notational system called "time brackets." While the time-bracket system ensured that the total time for a performance would always remain the same, it allowed sufficient flexibility to the performers in the spirit of Cage's indeterminate aesthetic--- the brackets made the music became, in his words, "earthquake proof." This book offers an overview of the series, an exploration of sources and compositional process, an analytical discussion of selected works, a contextual inquiry into the works with respect to Cage's interests in American anarchistic traditions, and a concluding discussion that considers aspects of reception and historiography.